HARRISBURG -- Don Barden has faced many obstacles in his plans to build the Majestic Star casino in Pittsburgh, but at least that project is under construction.

The same can't be said about two large casinos planned for Philadelphia, where lawsuits, zoning fights, angry residents and battling politicians have kept any work from beginning on the $986 million Foxwoods casino and the $550 million SugarHouse casino, which are planned for sites several miles apart along the Delaware River waterfront.

Western Pennsylvanians might say: "Who cares?" The answer: Any homeowner who's saddled with high property taxes.

The longer it takes for those two Philadelphia casinos, with several thousand slot machines each, to open for business, the longer it will take for the full amount of property tax relief -- $1 billion or more, Gov. Ed Rendell says -- to be generated statewide. This year, the tax relief total stands at $613 million for home and farm owners.

Last week, three Democratic legislators from Philadelphia took a step that could delay the casinos even longer.

State Sen. Vincent Fumo and Reps. Mike O'Brien and Bill Keller are trying to set up "a collaborative, inclusive process aimed at finding new locations for the city's slots gambling casinos."

In a statement, they noted that gambling parlors in other parts of the state are "open or well into construction."

But in Philadelphia, "gaming is no closer to reality than it was prior to enactment of the 2004 gaming law," they said, noting that the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board recently revised its forecast for when the casinos would open -- not before 2010 or maybe even 2011.

No construction has occurred even though the gaming board awarded the two slots licenses back in December 2006. SugarHouse is to be built at a former Jack Frost sugar refinery along the Delaware River, north of the downtown area, and Foxwoods is also to go along the river, about three miles away from SugarHouse, south of downtown. The Foxwoods developer also owns a giant Indian tribe casino in Connecticut.

Residents have vociferously complained they were left out of the siting process. They maintain that the casino locations chosen by the developers are too close to houses, schools and places of worship. City officials and state legislators are under severe pressure to placate the critics and find different locations.